Asia's Tech News, Weekly: August 16th 2025
Indonesia's sovereign AI fund, hyperscale data center in Vietnam, Pakistan central bank mulls crypto, geothermal in Indonesia, China's Geespace satellites, Trump's NVIDIA deal, network LLM in China...
• Vietnam: "...Deputy Minister of Finance Nguyễn Đức Chi said that the pilot project on crypto asset market had been basically completed in terms of criteria for market participants..." / full item
• Indonesia joins the AI tech stampede with proposal for a 'sovereign AI fund', building on its national roadmap on AI / full item
• Malaysia: YTL Power International Bhd unveils ILMU, the country's first homegrown large language model / full item
• "A new IDC InfoBrief... revealed that around 42 percent of organizations in SEA have already implemented agentic AI, and close to 44 percent are planning to use the technology..." / full item
• China Telecom has completed pilot commercial deployment of LLM distributed training over a 500km fiber link, using 1024 GPUs / full item
"...the Korean SMEs and Startups Ministry will prepare a comprehensive plan within 2025 to advance Korea toward the Top Four Global Venture Nations target and to catalyze a Third Venture Boom." / full item
• Vietnam's CMC Corporation inks MOU with Samsung C&T, the firm's construction, trade, and technology arm, to build a $1BN hyperscale data center project in Ho Chi Minh City / full item
• Philippines: AI Revolution Summit 2025 is set for October 17, a senior professionals forum looking at all things innovation and artificial intelligence / full item
• Vietnam: "VSAP LAB joint-stock company held a dedication ceremony for the first advanced semiconductor packaging laboratory project..." / full item
• China Unicom, the country's no.3 telco, reported earnings of $2 billion in H1 2025, growth of near 5% built on combination of market growth and internal streamlining / full item
• "South Korea’s Dunamu has entered into a strategic agreement with Vietnam’s Military Bank to build the country’s first crypto exchange." / full item
• "South Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups has announced the selection of 13 global venture capital (VC) firms to manage the 2025 Korea Global Fund..." / full item
• State Bank of Pakistan is working with Japan's Soramitsu blockchain firm to pilot a central bank digital currency this year, building on Soramitsu's Cambodia CBDC success / full item
• South Korea: Seoul district of Gangnam is boosting cryptocurrency confiscation for tax evaders, seizing $244,796 since the end of last year / full item
• China: CATL, world's largest lithium-ion batteries maker, suspends operations at major lithium mine, sparking a price jump for lithium and lithium miners’ stocks / full item
• Singapore's ASMPT semiconductor assembly and packaging equipment firm is to close its Shenzhen factory, laying off 950 workers to streamline mainland China operations / full item
"Mexico, Malaysia, and India are not aiming to compete with the state-of-the-art chips produced by leaders TSMC or Nvidia. Instead, their goal is more modest: to make legacy chips..." / full item
• Taiwan's GlobalWafers received over $200M in June under the US CHIPS and Science Act as part-support for expanding its US silicon wafer production capacity / full item
• South Korea: AI chip firm, Rebellions, partners US-based Marvell Technology to co-develop custom AI-focused infrastructure targeting sovereign-scale deployments / full item
• Philippines: India's Tata Consultancy Services inks MoU with Now Telecom to further develop the Philippines' digital infrastructure / full item
• South Korea: Global Content Insight 2025 conference is set for November 6-7 in Seoul, looking at how innovation is reshaping content creation, distribution, and monetization / full item
• Indonesia: "...state-owned firms PT Pertamina and PT PLN have signed an agreement to co-develop 19 geothermal energy projects with a combined capacity of 530 MW..." / full item
• 'Trump's unusual NVIDIA deal raises new corporate and national security risks, lawmakers and experts say' / full item
• China: Low-Earth Orbit satellite operator, Geespace, has reportedly launched a new batch of 11 sats into orbit, moving beyond the halfway point of phase 1 of a planned constellation / full item
• Vietnam: Ministry of Construction unveils detailed plan to establish a national information system and database dedicated to construction activities across the country / full item
• Vietnam 'moving closer to piloting a regulated crypto asset trading market, with the Ministry of Finance finalising a draft scheme that could see more than one trading platform licensed...' / full item
In wider-world technology news:
» "The United Launch Alliance launched a Vulcan rocket Tuesday night from Florida as part of the first U.S. Space Force-sanctioned flight." / full item
» Download: 'Leveraging 5G for AI-Driven Transformation in ASEAN: Insights, Strategic Shifts, and Policy Imperatives' from Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy / full item
More of Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific:
• LinkedIn / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Threads / Pinterest / Web
• Indo-Pacific Insight: Daily / Weekly / Network
And here's the link to this week's edition of Asia's Tech News, Weekly, published over on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7362650954686484481/